Nokia and Samsung expand cross licence

Nokia and Samsung have expanded their patent cross license agreement to cover certain additional patent portfolios of both parties. Nokia’s deal with Samsung was previously extended in 2013. Compensation related to that agreement was determined by arbitration between the two companies announced in February this year.

The agreement expands access for each company to patented technologies of the other. Nokia said the agreement “reinforces Nokia's leadership in technologies for the programmable world”, and expects a positive impact to the net sales of Nokia Technologies starting from the third quarter of 2016. As a result of the expanded agreement, Nokia Technologies' annualized net sales related to patent and brand licensing is expected to grow to a run rate of approximately €950 million by the end of 2016, said Nokia in a statement.

As noted by Fortune, since 2013 Nokia has bought out Siemens’ stake in joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks and bought Alcatel-Lucent. This added 3,700 patent families from the Siemens deal and 17,500 patent families from Alcatel-Lucent to the 9,900 patent families held by Nokia Technologies.

"With intellectual property portfolios from Nokia Technologies, Nokia Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia has a wealth of technologies relevant to mobile devices and beyond," said Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies in the Nokia statement. "We welcome this expanded agreement with Samsung which recognizes the strength of our assets, and we continue to pursue new licensing opportunities across a number of diverse industries."

Professors call for venue reform

“Changes to the venue rules are necessary and urgent to address the significant problem of forum shopping in patent litigation cases,” said the letter.

The professors noted that the Eastern District of Texas is home to nearly half of all US district court patent cases, with one judge handling 1,686 of the cases filed in the district in 2015 – or two-thirds of the patent cases in the district.

“If all of those cases were to go to trial, that single judge would have to complete four to five trials every day of the year (including weekends) – not counting any time for motions or other hearings. The burden of this overwhelming number of cases leads, unsurprisingly, to a high reversal rate on appeal,” said the letter.The Federal Circuit affirmed 39% of the decisions from the Eastern District of Texas in 2015.

“It is imperative that Congress address patent venue reform to return basic fairness, rationality, and balance to patent law,” said the letter. “Specifically, venue reform that treats plaintiffs and defendants equally by requiring a substantive connection to the venue on the part of at least one party is critical to ensure fairness and uniformity in patent law.”

Last week, Senator Jeff Flake (right) slammed patent trolls while advocating for the VENUE Act, which only has two co-sponsors.

“Patents are an important part of our economy and are vital to promoting innovation and spurring growth. However, the health of the patent system is at risk,” Observer quoted Senator Flake as saying. “Specifically, there is an ever-increasing problem of frivolous patent lawsuits brought by non-practicing entities, also known as patent trolls.”

Adidas puts foot down

Patent disputes appear to be increasingly afoot in the sneaker industry. Adidas recently sued Skechers in the District of Oregon, claiming its patented technology of a “Springblade” shoe has been infringed, reports Forbes.

The Guangzhou IP Court in China has issued what is believed to be its first preliminary injunction in a patent infringement case.

According to The Fashion Law, the court ordered Guangzhou Wentan Trading to cease making and selling nine models of Louboutin lipstick that the luxury fashion brand claimed infringed its design patents for lipstick cases.

The Guangzhou IP Court was established in December 2014, and is one of three IP courts in China, along with Beijing and Shanghai.

More than 200 of the cases had a party from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan or foreign countries, with 83 of those cases involving US entities while “a couple of cases involve British, French and Japanese entities,” according to Jiaquan IP Law.

Yahoo’s serious severity issues

Yahoo may struggle to sell its patent portfolio, according to a recent report. A survey by TurboPatent estimated that 44% of its patents have “high severity” issues, reports Fortune.

“TurboPatent's analysis found Yahoo!'s Excalibur patent portfolio contains a much higher percentage of potentially worthless patents than the average patent portfolio,” said the company in a statement. In contrast, it said roughly 30% of the average patent portfolio of large corporations is worthless. An executive summary of the report can be viewed here.

The patents behind Pokémon Go

It has been impossible to avoid stories about Pokémon Go in the past week. Inevitably, there is an IP angle. In a blog post, Envision IP analysed Nintendo’s patent portfolio to see how it is protecting the technologies powering games such as Pokémon Go.

According to Envision IP, Nintendo owns more than 70 US patents and has 37 pending related to augmented, mixed and virtual reality hardware and software. Globally, it owns more than 180 patents and published applications related to these types of patents. These patents include aspects such as three-dimensional data processing, displaying immersive scenes, creating virtual spaces, motion and movement sensors for portable devices, eye tracking and visual data overlays.

The company owns almost 1,200 active in-force US patents as a whole, up from about 1,000 in 2013.

“While Nintendo continues to re-invent itself with innovative offerings like Pokémon Go, the company has done a good job in obtaining patent protection for its proprietary technologies,” concluded Envision IP. “Many of its technologies related to immersive display processing and hardware for devices which enable true augmented experiences for users are similar to those technologies found in non-gaming applications of wearable devices and AR glasses.”